The data of Apple customers in China will come under the control of a state-owned company from the end of the month, with the American firm set to hand over the operation of its iCloud data centre located in mainland China to Guizhou-Cloud Big Data.

Apple sold less iPhones in the latest quarter but earned a lot more than a year ago, given the price of its iPhone X began at US$1000, according to the company's results for the first fiscal quarter of 2018. The user base of active devices rose to 1.3 billion in January.